Music as a communal experience goes back hundreds if not thousands of years. Prior to the modern age, sharing the experience of “audio” or “visual” data included public performances of music or staged shows. In the modern age, the desire to share audio or visual data experiences is no different, but the means of providing these types of multimedia content have changed dramatically.
Since Thomas Edison first recorded his voice on a wax cylinder, humankind has recorded itself, both audibly and, although later it time, via video. These recordings have been, more or less, easily reproducible, and thus, use of recorded audio and/or video has proliferated.
Moreover, live broadcast of audio and/or video has been done for many decades via broadcast via radio waves. Indeed, radio and television broadcasts are still immensely popular and lucrative. As technology has advanced, the ability to experience audio and/or video in new ways has increased dramatically. Fast forward to the Internet age, and people are accessing audio, video and other multimedia in almost every corner of the globe over the Internet.
For music, video and other multimedia to be experienced over the Internet, it typically requires specialized equipment, high powered computers, and the like to transform the multimedia into a digital streaming file. It is difficult to stream live, in real time, audio, video or other like multimedia streams and it's even more difficult for people to access this multimedia together in real time. The problem of a real-time synced shared experience is compounded when multimedia is being accessed by different users from different sources. A need, therefore, exists for multimedia retrieval, matching and syncing systems and methods of using the same that allows a user to share in real-time the experience of live audio, video and/or other streaming multimedia with others on the Internet in such a way that anyone can sync up with and stay connected to that shared live streaming experience.
While streaming music and other multimedia online is quite popular, there are many sources for obtaining streaming of music and other multimedia. Because of this, the market providing access to streaming multimedia is fragmented. A need, therefore, exists for a multimedia portal that concentrates a social layer on top of a plurality of multimedia digital content streaming services, allowing users to search and access audio, video and other multimedia from their favorite sources in a single location and then allowing other users to sync into and stay connected with the experience by either accessing content from the same source or by matching and streaming the content from another accessible source with an overlapping catalogue of content.